where have all loyal readers vanished?!
hi everyone. I own a personal blog and it will complete three years this october.
When I had joined blogging about 3 years ago there used to be a faithful readers group of every personal blogger . you know, a group of 25-30 people who regularly read and commented on each other's blog. And by commenting I obviously don't mean things like 'nice post' or 'beautiful work' etc but genuine and honest feedbacks.
But today I see people discussing and struggling to increase their page ranks, unique visitors number and what not! I really don't understand if people have simply joined the blogosphere for that.
Most of those in my group left blogging because they felt that comments like the ones you get (if you are lucky to get any!) are equivalent to making fun of their write-ups! Even on indivine, people vote for you if you blindly vote or comment for them. sad that blogging has come down to nothing but 'mutual back scratching and shameless self promoting'.
And now since most of those i know and read have already left blogging, I still am in search for those I can follow and those who believe in blogging for a cause, blogging to learn and share not for hits and PRs!
Requesting you all to reply ONLY if you feel the same. And if you know someone then feel free to share his/her blog link. thank you :)
They bother too much of PR, SEO etc because it has the potential to bring much more traffic than which loyal readers give. High traffic in most of the cases, more traffic results in more money from ads. Now that is for non-personal blogs.
Coming to personal blogs, they should not at all be concerned about seo, pr etc because it no way helps them. I see some people running after them ( not all ). It is probably because they came across to many tech / blogging blogs highlighting the importance of seo without mentioning that it won't work for personal blogs [ in most of the cases ].
Coming to those groups of 25-30 people you were talking about, check out this : http://indifictionworkshop.blogspot.in/. Look at the comments on the posts of that blogs. The commenters give a detailed feedback on your writing. 
Thanks for the mention, Ranjith.
blog promotion...a-ha 
but my point was valid 
.different rules for different people?
You will soon loose that position 
lets ask Indipolice why he is thanking you for mention instead of scolding you for promoting links
@Nandini - Indipolice reserves the right not to answer off topic questions.
As far as I know about rules, giving links is not a problem here. The rule says that shamelss self-promotion is not allowed which means giving links just for the sake of promoting oneself or creating a thread with that purpose. I remember reading somewhere if there is a blog-post which is inline with the discussin, it is better to provide the link rather than posting the entire content on the thread.
hmmm
agree with you...and some left the blogosphere coz they lost hopes and sadly I knew so many of them :(
Well - I think what you say still happens. There are a group of people who regularly comment on each other's blog and connect with each other on Facebook.
I know some people formally form something called blogger triber or whatever. But I don't like such formal groups as it is artificial. I think your blog social network should form naturally through inter personal connects.
I feel a blog should fulfil 2 criteria for someone to follow.
1. Person's writing should be interesting
2. Person should be following you regularly.
Some may argue that only criteria 1 is suffient and fulfilment of criteria 2 feels like back scratching. But fact is there is no dearth of good writers to follow on blog-o-sphere and there are also books competing for your time. So given the choice between 2 bloggers who write equally well and you having time to read only one of them, you would rather follow the one who is following you.
By the way, the link Ranjith has given is not a blogger's community. It is our group of aspiring ficition writers - we have a facebook group where we have discussions on various aspects of writing fiction and every month we have a fiction writing exercise where the judges are winners of previous edition and feedback is also received from other members.
My main point was about the feedback that one will get from others. 
I included the details about judges being the winners of previous month and about a new topic every month but I wanted to verify them. I looked for an about page on that blog but didn't find any. So, removed those details.
Sorry for the slightly wrong info. 
True, Ranjith. I think we have to build an About Page. We are carrying out all our activities through Facebook, effectively excluding all those who do not have Facebook account. I think initially we just got it started just to gauge whether the idea will work. Now it has run successfully for 8 editions and 9th edition is running. So it is time we gave it a more formal look.
@TF - Would it be possible to provide the link of that Facebook community either here or via IndiMail?
What is SEO?
Oh, I thought it was some weird name for a cake
She says, "Requesting you all to reply ONLY if you feel the same."
This statement seems to suggest she might not appreciate hijacking of the thread.
lol TF..not really! I mentioned that in the hope to find some people who would provide me their bloglinks as well as of others who feel the same and sail in the same boat like me. Still waiting:))
@Sarah - Actually it is against forum rules to share links. That is why no one one is sharing.
If we open this up forums for link sharing we will be spammed with the links of the very same blogs you want to avoid.
I think you should find people through Indivine or on FB communities like Real Fiction and comment on those you like. I for one definitely begin to follow people if they comment genuinely on 2-3 of my successive posts and I find what they write interesting. Of course though I might stop following if the person chooses to abandon me completely subsequently for months even though I have started following. Guess most others also do something similar.
Sarah - I was thinking about the same thing last month. I do get a few readers from across the world - they found me during some photo contest or writing contest. But Indian bloggers who I interact with come with the if-you-read-me-i'll-read-you mentality. Not all but many!
I do not have a problem with that at all. Because i do not read every single post someone writes. I follow around 200 bloggers and open their posts only if the topic interests me.
I do try to be a polite blogger and read people (at least once a week) who read/subscribe to me. I think blogging is a mutual connection. So many people have their own blogs that finding only 'readers' will be a challenge.And whether someone writes a personal/tech/gossip or beauty blog, everyone wants to be read. There's nothing wrong with that.
SEO helps people looking for a particular info land on your blog, it should be a good thing. Sad that too many people focus on tricking readers and use black hat SEO techniques.
Sarah - Congratulations on reaching this milestone (in the near future). 3 years is a long time!
On a serious note, irrespective of what kind of blogger one is, if you're looking for real tips and 'tricks'/suggestions for SEO and want to earn properly, shouldn't they check out webmaster forums like digital point and Warrior forum and even Black Hat World (well, they do have white hat SEO section too :P)? Most of the blokes who talk about SEO are outdated tips, even would make things worse considering google always update their search engine mechanism. Its funny that those who preach such SEO tips and those who unfortunately use them, eventually at some point become the victim of panda update and cry about it. People need to be very careful when using such 'tricks' as it may also do more harm than good. Most of these tech bloggers even use automated softwares that prepare content for them and post it. They basically rip a content, use different words and sentence construction method, more or less like a bot. And on top of it, most bloggers like, +1/tweet and comment in eachother's post so there so guaruntee that it really works or not, whether or not they claim- or when people in the comment sections says 'OMG!!!! IT WORKS!!!!! ROAAAAR!!!!". Fun fact: apparently, in a shared hosting if your website is hosted along with other websites that obviously sharing the same IP address hosted in the same server with content that google hates, you get affected by that too? I don't think any of these SEO chaps say that, so there ya go!!!
i think thread starter is looking for her long lost readers and is least interested in any seo etc
I know. I am simply adding confusion to the already confused threaded discussion.
MahaConfusion!!!
Sign in to reply to this thread
